Approaching Sanitation:
A Typological Response to the Study
of Bathroom Infrastructure in Delhi India
Critic: Maria Gonzalez Aranguren and
Pankaj Vir Gupta
Location: Delhi, India
Area: 150sf - 2,100sf
14sm - 195sm
Term: Fall 2018
A Typological Response to the Study
of Bathroom Infrastructure in Delhi India
Critic: Maria Gonzalez Aranguren and
Pankaj Vir Gupta
Location: Delhi, India
Area: 150sf - 2,100sf
14sm - 195sm
Term: Fall 2018
The stretch of the Yamuna River which runs from the Wazirabad Barriage to the Okhla Barriage through New Delhi, India is the most contaminated part of the entire river. This pollution, which constitutes this as a dead river, is almost entirely contributed by human feces, industrial effluents, and irrigation chemicals. This is a critical issue due to the growing population in Delhi and the lack of clean water to support them.
A goal of the studio was not only to gain an understanding of how to clean the water, but how to prevent pollutants from entering the water to begin with. The pollutant of focus for this project was human feces. The primary reason there is so much fecal matter in the Yamuna River is due to a lack of well constructed and reliable infrastructure between the starting point of the toilets and the end point of the sewage treatement plants. However, the secondary reason is that although the government had an initiative to install 75 million toilets by 2019, there was or is still a large portion of the population without access to bathrooms and therefore defecating in the open.
In 2018, the recorded data on open defecation stated that 700,000 people in Delhi or four percent of the population defecated in the open. This number may seem low, but there was reason to believe that not all those who had access to restrooms were actually using the public facilities. This was due to vandalism, lack of cleaning, broken plumbing, safety concerns, hours of operation, and the distance they were from where the users call home.
In response to these issues, the research conducted throughout the semester began by identifying locations in Delhi where there was the greatest need for bathroom infrastructure. In looking at these locations, scales and types of bathrooms were designed for the unique urban scenarios which appeared in these locations.
The overaraching goal of the designed interventions is to provide variations of semi-public to public bathrooms which solve issues of the current public bathrooms in Delhi and to bring them closer to those who need them the most.
A goal of the studio was not only to gain an understanding of how to clean the water, but how to prevent pollutants from entering the water to begin with. The pollutant of focus for this project was human feces. The primary reason there is so much fecal matter in the Yamuna River is due to a lack of well constructed and reliable infrastructure between the starting point of the toilets and the end point of the sewage treatement plants. However, the secondary reason is that although the government had an initiative to install 75 million toilets by 2019, there was or is still a large portion of the population without access to bathrooms and therefore defecating in the open.
In 2018, the recorded data on open defecation stated that 700,000 people in Delhi or four percent of the population defecated in the open. This number may seem low, but there was reason to believe that not all those who had access to restrooms were actually using the public facilities. This was due to vandalism, lack of cleaning, broken plumbing, safety concerns, hours of operation, and the distance they were from where the users call home.
In response to these issues, the research conducted throughout the semester began by identifying locations in Delhi where there was the greatest need for bathroom infrastructure. In looking at these locations, scales and types of bathrooms were designed for the unique urban scenarios which appeared in these locations.
The overaraching goal of the designed interventions is to provide variations of semi-public to public bathrooms which solve issues of the current public bathrooms in Delhi and to bring them closer to those who need them the most.
